We, music enthusiasts, are facing some new and exciting movements within the industry. One interesting and anticipated advance is coming from Apple. Many Apple product owners, commentators and speculators are clamoring about the new iOS 5, which is due to reach consumers this fall. The iOS 5 will include many cool new features that we have come to expect from Apple, of course, but one of the most talked about addition will be the iTunes cloud service. The cloud service will include a great little sleuth of a feature called iTunes Match, designed to compete with services introduced by Amazon and Google.
Apple recently announced that iTunes Match will give users the option to download or stream their music libraries on up to 5 devices including iPads, iPhones, iPods, etc. Apple, keeping many details of how the iTunes Match service will actually work under wraps, has said that all music ‘matched’ or copied from the Apple’s master library will play at a decent quality (256kbps). However, for tracks in your library that iTunes cannot ‘match’ with Apple’s offerings can only be streamed from the cloud after it has been uploaded. Either way you will have complete access to your music catalog (up to 25,000 songs) on your various iOS devices and computers.
I am personally not sold on this Apple service just yet. To be quite honest, I just do not have the need for a service like this one, yet. I listen to my music from my home computer, which is connected to a sound system that my neighbors and I both can appreciate. And currently I use my iPhone to access my songs both in the gym and in the car. Being that I do not even get workable service in parts of my gym, how would a streaming service even work?
The ability to store your library in the cloud comes to us at a price of $24.99 each year. Apple already receives enough of my wages each month as it is. I will just need to keep that in mind before I am convinced that I just cannot live without this new iTunes service.
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